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Today was a good day. I have some papers that I needed to sign which also required two witnesses, so this afternoon I went over to my friend Amy’s house so she and Rick could provide some initials and signatures to help me out with that. I ended up staying there about a half hour, and we stood outside talking and looking at various projects that Rick either had been working on or planned to start working on soon… and lemme tell ya, that guy can do almost anything. 💪🏻😎 And like I told him, sometimes it’s nice to live through someone else’s inspiration and motivation about their passion projects. 😏

After that I made a quick trip to the gas station in Rockbridge so I could a) fill my car with gas, b) pick up enough necessities to make it to next week, and c) grab some Burger King so I didn’t have to do any cooking tonight… all in one shot. Basically just a mini-run to keep me “good” here at the house until next week, when I intend to do a much bigger “stocking up” shopping trip before my surgery… just in case I don’t feel like leaving the house and mixing with the unwashed public for a while afterwards.

But what I actually did while I was out today isn’t the point. The point is that I did all of that stuff today without thinking about the problem with my leg at all. 😃 I may have had some pain as I was getting in and out of the car, but I don’t remember it. 🤷🏻‍♂️ And as I was walking around to get ready, or over at Amy’s house, or while I was filling the car and doing my shopping… once I got home I realized that I hadn’t been limping, at least as far as I know, through any of it. 😯

I’m not going to start cheering just yet, since I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs as I’ve been going through this… but yeah, it feels good to have not been nagged by pain for at least that small part of my day. I’m hoping that sitting on this giant silly yoga ball is actually making a positive impact, because I’m going to keep doing it. I’m also going to change the sheets on my bed and add that fluffy mattress topper thing that I bought a few weeks back.

I really needed something like this today. 🙂 I mean, I’ve got much less on my mental agenda today than yesterday, but it really was an uplifting surprise to have (for the first time in a couple of months) such a span of painless walking. And the older and more broken that I get, the more that I’m learning to appreciate these small victories.

I’m right in the middle of a “spell” with my lower back. 🙁 It happens a couple times a year, and I’ve even been to the ER once (several years ago) while it was happening – and the scan or x-ray or whatever that they did, it didn’t reveal any damage or specific thing that could be causing it. (Because of course it didn’t. 😠) So, even though I woke up today essentially unable to walk or take steps due to the unpredictable random jolts of pain – I’m still planning on waiting it out, and then the next time that I feel this coming on I’ll make plans to go to the ER again to see if I can get some answers.

It’s hard to describe the pain and that effect that it has if you haven’t experienced something similar. Cautiously and slowly taking each step, being unable to predict what movement is going to cause a jolt of pain that would knock me over if I didn’t have a wall to grab on to. 😳😢 Even just getting out of bed required five minutes of rolling, twisting, sliding, bending – all to find the one way that allowed me to sit up. And I do mean allowed. Because no matter how much pain that I was determined to accept, there’s a point where pain dictates what the body does, and when it doesn’t wanna allow you to put your weight on one leg, it’ll be happy to let you fall to the ground to avoid it. 😔

But anyway, today is the price that I’m paying for yesterday’s activities. I went up to Columbus to take Cassi to her doctor appointment, and it was actually helpful to spend so much time sitting in my comfortable car seat with the heating elements set to max. ♨😋 I think that’s actually what allowed me to function as well as I was during the moments when we were out of the car. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I also gritted my teefs and made a bunch of phone calls to handle appointments and things that I’ve been needing to take care of. 📞😬

I had $80 in free slot play, and $30 in dining credit, so after her appointment we went over to Hollywood Casino. By the time we got there we were both starving, so we opted for the buffet and absolutely poofed ourselves before we played. 🧑🏻👱🏻‍♀️🍕🍗🥙🍔🥩🥓🍟🥗🍖 I let her play on my free money, and I took the same amount in cash to play along side of her. By the time we left she had won over $240, and I was able to (again) walk away with the same amount that I took, which is absolutely fine with me. 😁 So that “Meh… why not?” side trip ended up being a good experience for both of us.

We then went to the huge thrift store across the way from the casino, and she picked up a handful of new black pants for use with her work uniform, along with some extra shorts and tops thanks to the unexpected winnings. 💁🏻‍♀️ I found a couple of shirts that I liked, but no jeans. 😒 I’ve finally started looking for jeans that have a waistband that’s one size up from the ones that I’ve been wearing for the past many years… not something I’m too excited about… and I’m hoping there’s still a medical explanation that can eventually be fixed so I can stick with my normal “almost fat” sized pants.

So yeah, even though I felt miserable, and feel even more miserable today, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. 🙂 I like when I can do something fun with a friend and it ends up actually really helping them out at just the right time. And when I got home… I was still hurting, but no worse than I had throughout the day… so I certainly wasn’t expecting this when I woke up today. 🤔🤨 I’m going to be taking it super, super easy for the next couple of days though, so I can give it some time to hopefully recover a bit. 🧘🏻‍♂️🙏🏻 I mean, I know I’ll get better – because I always have – but it’s still scary when your ability to walk becomes questionable at best.

I figured I should get on here to give an update about the chest pains that I was having the other day since I’m feeling better now. No pains at all yesterday, and only hints of it the day before. I even decided to keep my tentative plans and spun them so that it was actually beneficial to my then-current condition.

It was yet another deal where I made the agreement a while ago, and then when the day came I was less than enthusiastic for obvious reasons. 🤢❤ But Cassi’s brother Scott, he was doing a rare live performance (drums) with Rich Regal at the local Moose lodge – and since she had never seen him play live I didn’t wanna have to cancel. But when I thought about it, having someone around for a couple of days while I was feeling concerned… it would actually help put my mind at ease.

So we went to the show, which was (fortunately for my well-being… heh) only moderately attended while also being held in a rather large area of the lodge… so it actually ended up being a good time. 🤷🏻‍♂️🙂 It wasn’t really our style of music, but it was more about showing up to see and support Scott and Rich and the rest of them.

Having Cassi around yesterday also helped with my anxiety enough that I made a trip to the Walmart in Logan and did a “monthly” style grocery trip. 🤗 Lots of cans, boxes, and frozen stuffs… should last me a good long while. Other than that we’ve just been chilling and surprisingly doing a bunch of reading about job stuff, investment stuff, insurance stuff, doctor stuff, etc. 😁 I found one of those somewhat cheezy “Book of Secrets” books at the thrift store, which attempts to give you all sorts of tips and trips regarding almost everything you might encounter in life, so we’ve been having a good time going through that and even learning some things we didn’t previously know.

As far as I’m concerned though, whatever was going on with those chest pains… I feel like I’m most likely past whatever it was. (Touch wood) Obviously I’ll mention it to my doctor whenever I make that appointment… heh… but I’ve put “wisdom teef removal” at the top of my priority list for the moment, but after I’m starting to realize that I can’t keep putting off those routine “You’re a middle age d00d now” family physician appointments. 🙄

Here I’ve been, telling my friends “Nah, I’m not going out for Black Friday. I can’t even think of anything I need, and especially if I have to be out among the sea of people.” and I thought I was telling them the truth. 😏 Actually, most of those two sentences are still true… because no way would I consider going out to fight with the thousands of other assholes at the crack of dawn come this Friday – but it turns out that I did need something, and I didn’t even realize it until a just few minutes ago. (Deja vu… heh)

I’ll go ahead and describe the item, then I’ll get to the “deal” part of it. I already have a Playstation 4, and about a year ago Sony came out with a virtual reality headset for it which has been selling for $299. Also known as way too friggin’ much. Well, now that they’re preparing to come out with an updated version of the headset soon, prices in some places are dropping to $199 for the current model. Still expensive, but much more reasonable.

For me, any VR gaming that I end up doing will just be a bonus. Because, to be honest, I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve played a game on that system. 😕 Things over the past couple of years have warped my brain, taking away the desire to do many of the things I used to find fun… but anyway…

I had actually given the PSVR system a brief look when it originally came out, but mainly because of the photo and video applications. I have a 3D television, but I’ll now be able to watch 3D movies or videos on the headset. Same thing with 360° virtual reality videos. 😎 Does anything start to sound familiar? 🤔 At this price point, this thing sounds perfect for me since I’ve gota cheap 3D video recorder and a camera that can shoot 360° photos and videos. Honestly, the thing is made for me to own.

But it wasn’t even floating around in my brain as recently as 15 minutes ago, that is, until I saw a post from Cheap Ass Gamer that showed the system available at Kohl’s for $199 – plus for every $50 that you spent, you’d earn $15 in Kohl’s Cash which can be used for in-store purchases later. So I hit the site, put the PSVR in my cart, added a $1.00 foaming face mask (to push the total to just over $200) and boom… $60 in Kohl’s Cash, effectively making the final price only $140. 🤓 Giddyup.

This should really encourage my shooting in those alternative mediums.

Let me start by saying that yeah, I’m pretty messed up right now. 😞 My methods of dealing with my depression and anxiety might not be the greatest, but I’m doing what I can – and so far I’m hangin’ in there. Also, there was a point in time not too awful long ago that I wasn’t like this at all. 😳 Having said that, logic might say that since there was a time when I wasn’t this way in the past – there’s a pretty good chance that there will come a time in the future when I’m no longer like this. 🙂🤞 I just wanted to put that out here for folks that don’t really know me, and who might be assuming that I’ve just been a mess since birth or something. 😏 Not so.

Today was actually decent, helped in great part by the 15 hours of sleep that I got last night. 😧 My body finally won, fighting against my brain – which for some reason thinks that it doesn’t require any sleep at all to function. 😵 So catching up on sleep was step one, beautiful weather was step two, and then adding some frivolous stops while I was out doing my required errands was the third step that made “facing the humans” more tolerable today than I expected. 😎

Ollie’s has now been in our town long enough that I could actually take a leisurely look around the place without a thousand people and their carts getting in my way. Lots of stuff for home improvement… painting stuff, carpeting stuff… a thought which has been bouncing around in the back of my mind since I moved in here. 🤔 Decent prices there, which makes the idea of perhaps doing something in that arena less painful.

When I walked down the “office stuff” aisle though… there was a section with a bunch of little hard-cover spiral-bound notebooks that immediately shouted out to me. It’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve kept a proper journal, something which has been proven to help with my sanity, so I grabbed two of them – being optimistic that I could force myself back into the habit, just as I’ve done with this blog.

But I bought the stuff that I needed to buy, and then I picked up a few extra things like those notebooks just to add some “not meh” stuff to all my bags. And yeah, this probably sounds like the most non-interesting shopping trip / day in the world to most folks, but for me to just have a day that didn’t feel heavy… to me it was worth making an entry here. 😏

We’ve now reached the point where I’m hesitating to wrap it up here, because I’m looking over at a week-and-a-half’s worth of mail that is sitting on my couch that I absolutely have to get to tonight… and I just have a feeling that there’s gonna be one or two things in there that will try to remove my internal smile and kill my mood. 🤨 Oh, and regarding (perhaps) resuming my journal writing… if that ends up happening, at least y’all won’t have to put up with seemingly-pointless entries like this anymore, since they’ll be going in the book instead of up here. It was just a thought, for better or worse.

I was sitting here texting back and forth with Genesee a bit, picking her brain in regards to options for organizing and storing all of the family “memorabilia” that I’ve got. My grandparents‘ stuff, my aunt’s stuff, Mom and Dad’s stuff… there’s actually quite a bit of “stuff worth keepin” that I want to get much more organized than it is right now. (Not to mention my own growing collection of “stuff” to pass along…)

At first I was looking at cardboard boxes or banker’s boxes. There are somany options on Amazon for boxes… but before I really narrowed it down to potentials on there, I decided to start checking around for regular plastic storage tubs at Walmart, Target, Menards, etc. And at Target I found Sterilite 20-gallon bins with latching lids for $5.99 on sale… but they were pretty much sold out everywhere.

After adding the quantity I wanted to my cart, I found that no store within reasonable driving distance had enough to fill the order… until I did some tweaking and switched the color to the ugly purple offering – and then boom, more than enough for my needs. So tomorrow I’ll be driving my soon-to-be-organized ass to Reynoldsburg to pick up twelve of these suckers. And until tomorrow I’ll be hoping they actually have that many, that they (and their lids) won’t be broken or cracked, and that they’ll all fit in my car for the ride back home with me.

Again, I know this will seem silly to most people, but even just the searching and planning and ordering of these storage tubs helped put my brain at ease this evening. I needed something to give me a brief bit of purpose, and then once I have them – there’s even more purpose… for me to continue going through stuff, sorting it, stashing it, labeling it, etc. I just want to be a good “keeper of the Batina Archive” so even though my twitchy brain pushed me into it in a way, it’s still a beneficial thing for me to do despite the instigating factor… so it’s all good.